Tag: Cooking

Our dad checked a book called Mad Scienceout from our library last week. It was written by Theodore Gray, the author of the Gray Matter column in Popular Sciencemagazine. All of the experiments in the book were cool, but most involved high heat (as in well over 1,000 degrees) or toxic chemicals like Mercury or Chlorine Gas. As these experiments were a little bit beyond our league at the moment, I looked for some experiments that wouldn’t kill, maim, or seriously injure us if they went wrong. We found the perfect one: Dry Ice Cream.

We’ve used dry ice before and we figured that this experiment would be perfect, because, as Luke said “it combines two of my favorite things, science and food.”

It was surprisingly easy to make this ice cream, and it tasted very good (although it had a slightly carbonated taste from the Dry Ice). The ice cream was extremely creamy, since no ice crystals had time to form in the 2-3 minutes it took for our ice cream to completely set up.

Everyone in our family was very impressed with the dry ice cream, and wanted more. Maybe we could do liquid nitrogen ice cream next time…..

Our dad is reading us The Hobbit every night before we go to bed, and it inspired us to make this movie, since The Hobbit has two different unexpected visits in it, which we tried to use as the basis for this video’s storyline.

We were on a vacation to Florida when we filmed it, which explains the dramatic change in scenery from our house. (There aren’t very many palm trees where we live!) We shot it in the rental house we were staying in, and this is our first movie to be shot “on location”!

I didn’t bring a tripod on our vacation, so all of the shots where the camera was still were shot by propping my camera on stools, tables, books, and other such things. Even the moving camera shots turned out pretty good, since my D3100 is so much bigger than the cameras we’ve used to film most of our previous videos. Its weight and size make it much less likely to jolt all over the place when its being moved. Several of the static shots were also shot without support, such as the three outdoor shots, but they turned out very smooth since the camera is much easier to hold still. My 18-55 mm VR lens (the one I used to shoot this video) has vibration reduction, which really helps as well.

I have made numerous special dinners with my siblings, and yesterday Luke and I made one.
It was Italian themed, and we decided that pasta and meatballs would be a good idea to make. The only hitch was that our family is on the Daniel Fast right now, which means that meat is off limits. We decided to be resourceful and made “meatballs” out of spinach, lentils and portabella mushrooms. I got the recipe from Mrs. Kristen Feola’s book, The Ultimate Daniel Fast. We all had a great time, both preparing and eating the meal!

As all of you who have been diligently following this blog for a while know, I read “Redwall” a few months ago, and really enjoyed it, so much in fact, that I am now reading it aloud to my siblings. The reason that I read “Redwall” in the first place was because it was one of the books I was required to read for an online grammar class that I’m taking through The Potter’s School, and one of the assignments we needed to do for the class was make a “Redwall” themed sword,tapestry or meal. I, never one to turn down a chance for a good meal, decided to go in that direction, and made “Hunter’s Hot-Pot”, which is basically a stew of carrots, potatoes, onions, peppers, spices and water with a fancy, “Redwally” name.

I had a lot of fun making it, although it was pretty easy, as all I had to do was chop up some vegetables and toss them in a pot of boiling water with some spices until they were soft, and I then got to do the part that was the most fun of all: eating it!

My mom thought it would be nice to have something to go with the Hot-Pot, so we not only had it, but we were also able to have some biscuits (or, as my sister called them because they were made with flax seed and needed a “Redwally” name, ”Fall Flax Favorites”) that my mom had made earlier in the day. Everyone said that the food was delicious, although my dad pointed out that whoever the hunter was that invented this recipe wasn’t a very good one, as he hadn’t been able to catch anything to put in it!

As you who have been reading our blog for a while may know, back in July I made everyone a dinner at “Adam’s Diner”. Well, I’ve done three more since then, each time with a different theme, and I thought I’d share some pictures with you from one that I did several Saturdays ago with my dear sister Rachel.
We did a sub sandwich shop theme, complete with homemade sub rolls.
Rachel whipped up a batch of chocolate milk, which was a big hit with everyone.
Rachel and I greatly enjoyed preparing the food, almost as much as everyone enjoyed eating it, which, in our family, is saying a lot!

Isaac, John and I blessed the family by baking bread yesterday morning, and several of my sibs and I were able to get a few pictures of the excitement, which I thought you might enjoy.
Isaac was in charge of the wet ingredients
The dry ingredients were John’s domain
We all helped mix the dry and wet together

Isaac put the dough evenly into the 5 pans (with some help from me)

After it was done cooking, I took it out of the roaster (which we used instead if the oven to avoid heating up the house)
Unfortunately, while it cooked, the bread has rose a lot more than I had expected it too, resulting in this sorry looking mess!
(They still tasted good,though!)

Isaac,Paul and I made some cookies yesterday, and I thought you might enjoy a few pictures of the process (we only got two pictures of the whole process, so there aren’t that many). It was interesting making the cookies with Paul, since we had him doing almost the same jobs he had done when we made waffles, convincing him that we were working on waffles, not cookies (this also resulted in some confusion among the people not involved- Paul was telling them we were making one thing while Isaac and I were saying we were making something else!)
Isaac and I put them on the trays (of which there were 4) and then I put them in our trusty roaster oven (our mom really likes using it because we can put it out in the garage and not heat up the house)
Everybody agreed that the cookies were a success- even Paul!
That’s happiness for you!
Have a blessed (that’s a word the Moodys use a lot) day!
Adam

Isaac,Paul and I recently had the privilege of blessing our family by making waffles, we used our normal oatmeal pancake recipe, except we didn’t put in any raisins,blended the oats and added more liquid to make it more “battery”.
Enjoy the pictures of the craziness!
Paul got the first (and one of the most important) ingredient out for us
Isaac then measured out 12 cups of oats to put in the bowl
He then blended them
And after all the oat work was done he measured all the other ingredients into the bowl
We then started putting the batter on the Waffle Iron
By the time we finished up the batter we had made 52 waffles!

As I mentioned in last night’s post, John and I were going to grill chicken for dinner, we did it and I figured I would share a few pictures of the process (Rachel was only able to take pictures of us putting the chicken on, so you’ll just have to use your imagination to make a mental picture of how delicious and wonderful it looked when we took it off!)
First I demonstrated the “proper technique” for putting chicken on the grill
Then John did all of the rest of the chicken breasts by himself!
(I had to have my tongue just right in order for it to work!)
The chicken tasted great and everyone (at least said they) enjoyed it!
Have a good week!
Adam

This Sunday John and I worked on blessing the family with sausages, John put all but one of the sausages on the grill and did everything else by himself (under the watchful eye of his older brother) I wasn’t grilling until I was almost 13, and here’s my younger brother who gets to start before he turns 8! Pretty soon I’ll be out of a job if I don’t watch out!
Brotherly advice:
Taking a sausage off:
To the plate!
Who said grilling can’t be fun!
Good bye for now, John and I need to grill some chicken for our dinner!

Last Saturday I sent my family off on a treasure hunt for a couple of hours so I could transform our kitchen into a “Diner” (my mom and dad knew what I was up to) I made French-fries, Hamburgers and Banana splits! Everyone enjoyed it, including me! It was a lot of work, since I kept the whole thing secret until I had everyone sit down to eat, so I had a somewhat limited time frame to work on making everything while they were away working on figuring out the treasure hunt. (I made the chocolate sauce,Ice cream, and whipped cream from scratch).
Mom enjoyed the food!
Waiting for burgers and working an activity sheet.
Banana Splits!
The master waiter in action!
Have a good day!

Yesterday Luke and I had the privilege of making homemade pizza for our family. I totally forgot about taking a picture of it until it was too late, and even then I put it off until this morning. So I guess I have to confess that I staged the photo- I got out a plate,took the pizza from it’s container in the refrigerator, took the picture and then immediately put the pizza and plate back (after I washed the plate of course).
Here is all of the pizza that was left after last night’s dinner:
(The picture isn’t staged all that well but that was kind of the “look” that I was going for- just a few pieces of lonely, leftover pizza sitting on a plate).

I was able to bake several batches of flatbread yesterday morning. My mom found the recipe in a cookbook called ”The Ultimate Guide to the Daniel Fast” by Kristen Feola . The entire book is wrapped around a 21 day “fast” from all types of meat, dairy,eggs,yeast,and sweeteners so it not only has lots of good recipes in it but it also includes 21 daily devotionals that you can read every day that you do the fast. We (my mom, Rachel and I) have done the fast twice but we use the recipes from the cookbook almost daily. The cookbook is named after the fast that Daniel and his three friends went on in Daniel 1:11-16. (I didn’t really mean this to be a book review but while I’m at it I’ll say that “The Ultimate Guide to the Daniel Fast” deserves 5 out of 5 stars in my opinion). We were also able to have some leftover hummus to go with our flatbread (another Daniel fast recipe!) It was all very good (in my opinion) and the recipes are both available at UltimateDanielFast.com under appetizers and the entire cookbook is available at Amazon.com. I included a picture of my Hummus and Flatbread to show you just how delicious and wonderful they look together:I multiplied her recipe by 3 and it made exactly 12 pans of flatbread (rolled very,very thin).

All of the six sibs (especially Paul and Isaac whose duties usually start and end at the taste testing phase) like to cook, I’m not talking about pasta and sandwiches (which can be fun) I’m talking about real cooking: Homemade pizza (crust and all),bread,cookies (Rachel’s specialty) and all sorts of other things (Isaac and I enjoy making dips such as Guacamole, Hummus and Bean dip). For our 4th of July dinner (that we ended up eating on Wednesday) we had a special treat that we haven’t had in a long time: Portobello mushroom burgers! (I personally love fresh cooked mushrooms)

The “burgers” were a group effort and as you can see in the picture they turned out very well.

(We found the recipe in “The Ultimate Guide to the Daniel Fast” by Kristen Feola)